The Danger of Indecision OR: What's for Dinner (AGAIN)?

 

A friend of mine once reflected that no one ever told her that getting married meant having to decide what's for dinner every night for the rest of her life. And she was right. It's true. It's just a fact of life. We have to eat and when we share life with someone, that's a decision someone has to make. Every day. 

But that's not the problem. It's not the decsion itself - whether to get Chinese takeout or throw some burgers on the grill - it's the incessant necessity of making decisions to the point of wanting to flee.

Sometimes decisions are unrelenting, pressing in from all sides, demanding attention in the guise of work or responsibility to friends or community obligations. Decisions are what can transform an ordinary Wednesday afternoon, any Wednesday afternoon, into a long tunnel that makes you feel like coiling into a little ball and rolling yourself under the nearest couch with the dust bunnies and hiding.

It would be such a relief to just put one foot in front of another awhile and nothing else, just to leave the determining of fate to someone else, to release into an effortless few days without the insistent pressure of the next move.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!

Nope. No can do.

And this is why:

The minute we lay down the responsibility of decision for our own life, we hand over the privilege to someone else and, unless that person is God, they are not up to the task. 

No one else knows what we want from life but us. No one else is capable of our conviction or purpose. No one else knows what we are or are not willing to sacrifice to achieve something. No one else understands who or what or how we love.

Oddly enough, it matters less which decisions we make than that we just make them. Almost all poor decisions can be redeemed in one way or another, but letting go of the reins we were meant to hold means that the horse is likely to run wild, out of control in the wrong direction.

One thing I know for sure is that, assuming the Matrix really is fiction, I live. I have been given a life and that life is a pure gift, meant to be LIVED. 

Life means something. It has a purpose and it is my joy and privilege to find mine. God gave me something very fine and I will, until it is taken away from me, show Him I love Him by directing and using my life rightly.

This is not done by accident. It is done by decision.

So decisions can be at their least, a pain, or at worst, dangerous, but bring 'em on. I won't get through unscathed, but that's all right. What I will do is use the life I'm given for the glory of Him who made it, bringing in the process satisfaction to us both. 

So, anyway, what IS for dinner tonight?

Images: Shutterstock, Adobe

Exquisite Pain: Yin and Yang

 

You've heard people say it. 

"God never gives us more than we can handle."

And you know that's not true. 

He gives us more than we can handle all the time.

Or it feels like it anyway.

The bills we can't pay. The illness that won't go away. Betrayal. Accident. Death. As beautiful as it sometimes is, life sometimes sucks, too. And we can't do anything about it.

I swear, the objection to faith in God I hear most often is wondering why He permits so much evil in the world - why children die in horrible wars, why planes crash with whole skating teams on them, why neighbors thinks it's necessary to shoot the guy next door. And I don't blame the people who do the wondering.

The Right Question

The problem is that they're asking the wrong question. 

The rotten things in life aren't separate from the wonderful ones. They are all part of one thing, and that thing is life.

Even Jesus said we would always have poverty. (Matt 26:11).  God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good  (Matt 5:45). 

Get it? 

The right question is not why God allows evil and struggle. 

It's why we aren't taking a harder look and trying to understand the world that God actuallty made.  He didn't make a Disney world, with dragons and prince charmings duking it out to see who wins. He made a world where the horrible exists side by side with the wonderful.

The One

That's why our Asian friends use the yin/yang comparison. One life. One thing, With evil and good existing side by side in exquisite tension and in beautiful pain. 

We have one God and He made one life for us, one that includes both blooms and death, and we are to love Him and one another through it. 

It's actually quite a beautiful thing, when you think about it. Not treating trouble and pain as adverseries but as teachers that have their place. 

Something will eventally kill us all, after all. It will be good to understand that whatever does is part of the plan.

Image: Woo-Han, Substack

Love as the Consent Not to Reign

I've been reading Simone Weil.

If you've never heard of her, that's no big surprise. She's part philosopher, part mystic, and neither makes for a reputation anywhere near that of Stephen Colbert or Ozzie Osbourne. Simone has an interesting history. Jewish and living only until the age of 34 in prewar France, she began as a firm agnostic and gravitated slowly to Christian mysticism, remaining at the edge of organized religion, preferring a pragmatic rather than an emotional or more entirely spiritual approach to faith and wove ideas from Greek, Egyptian, and Hindu practice into her view of the eternal. It made for an interesting worldview.

But she has some important things to say. This is one of them:

God brings the universe into existence by agreeing not to command it even though He has the power to do so, but instead He allows the mechanical necessity of matter and the autonomy essential to thinking people to reign in His stead. His consent to do this is love. - Waiting for God

She sounds like a philosopher, but she applies her capacities of reason unapologetically to God. 

Unpacked, this makes for some deeply affecting resonance. 

First, it allows that God is responsible for creation, not only its physical components - earth and sky and the physics that govern them - but for humanity as well. However, it also sets apart his only thinking creation, humans, as separate entities altogether, given discrete privileges not granted the rest of creation. In an echo of the metaphorical Adam and Eve of the Bible, Simone applies both philosophy and theology simultaneously to what she observes to make sense of it. Physics, she says is what God made it and its mechanics run His universe without interruption or excuse, which is God's customary way of operation. God steps aside, however, when it comes to all matters of will. He has a will of His own, of course, but does not impose it and this, she says is how God loves us.

Then there's Simone's idea of our response to this:

God gives us our being so that we can give it back to Him. He allows us to live apart from Him and it's up to us to refuse the authorization. Humility is the refusal to exist apart from God - Gravity and Grace 

So there is a beautiful harmony in our intended relationship with God. God withholds the imposition of His will, deferring to our independence, and we withhold the exercise of that independence, deferring in turn to Him. 

That is communion. Perfect.

Image from The Drift

Staring at the Sun

 

I have a basket of flowers in my house. They are old and dry, many dusty from fragile years of saving. It's my basket of love, I tell anyone who asks its origin - roses and mums and others given in thanks or in consolation or congratulation or with any kind of empathy that seemed at the time like sweet fellowship. They retain some of their color, but aren't really a decoration. They are a reminder of love given and many times returned. A reminder of the parts of this life that were well-lived and tenderly remembered.

Yesterday, I found a poet who described why I've kept them.

Master, how serene
Are all the hours 
We waste

If, as we waste them,

We place them in a vase

Like flowers.

There are no sorrows

In our lives

Nor joys either.

Let us learn, then,

Innocent sages, 

Not to live life

But to pass through it,

Tranquil, serene,

Taking children

As our teachers,

Eyes full

Of nature...

Beside a river,

Beside a road,

Wherever we are,

Living life

With the same

Light ease.

Time passes,

And tells us nothing.

We grow old.

Let us learn almost

Mischievously,

To feel ourselves leaving.

There is no point

In doing anything.

There is no resisting

The monstrous god

Who devours

His own children.

Let us gather flowers.

Let us bathe our hands

In the calm rivers,

And from them

Learn their calm.

Sunflowers eternally

Staring at the sun,

We will leave life

Tranquilly, not even

Regretting

Having lived.

--Ricardo Reis

Image: Farmer's Almanac

A Spiritual Workout - Yearning for the Life

 

 

Last week, a friend of mine mused out loud that he thought he might give up Lent for Lent. Just Lent. I’m not sure exactly what he meant, but it may be the thought that Lent just doesn’t work for many people and, if that’s what he meant, I think he might be right. The whole idea of giving up something, or even of doing something extra, for 40 days just doesn’t make sense. And it doesn’t if we just look on the face of it. It seems kind of silly. Until we do it in earnest, trying to look at it from God’s point of view.

Jesus gave some pretty simple instructions:

First, He said, "Follow me." The early disciples did it. They left nets and families and literally traipsed along beside him. They traveled and listened and learned. We are supposed to do that, too. 

Then, He said, (paraphrased) "Do what I do." Or more correctly, "Why do you call me Lord, Lord and not do what I say?" That's a good question and I have an answer. Two of them. Because I'm human and because it's hard. But I keep forgetting something important. 

Being human isn't just something "only". Being human is being designed by God in the pattern of God. Being human means that we are more than flesh and blood. Being human means that we are infused with longing for perfect love, unfailing trust and justice, and an assurance that what we endure in this life ends in a condition that is beautiful and complete. It doesn't matter whether a person believes in God or not. We all want these things. The thing is that if we're ever going to get them, we have to DO something.

I broke my arm in mid-November and it's taken me until mid-February to regain most of my ability to do the things I used to do. In the meantime, I was necessarily sedentary and lost a lot of strength and vitality. Now that most of my maneuverabilty is back, I have to start moving  - yoga, dance, lifting weights, stretching. All that stuff. Not stuff usually on the top of my list for fun, but I know what the result is, having been this way before. I will become a person more fit for the life I want to lead. It's not the body I'm after. It's the life.

The same goes for my spiritual life. I have to spend time in the spiritual gym to prepare myself for the spiritual life I want and quite simply, as far as I'm concerned, there is no spiritual quest but the one toward more of God. More grace. More joy. More union. And I'm convinced that's what he wants for me. "The kingdom of God is in you". And I want to let it out.

God will do lots of things for us, but this is something WE have to do. 

So what equipment is in our spiritual gym? For me in this season, the weight I have to lift is restraint. Self control. Self denial. Jesus said that "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." He meant it. The qualites that make this life most worthwhile are not those that amuse and satisfy ourselves. They are the long-term struggles that we can look back on and know that we have done something lasting and worthwhile. Neither doing a job well or raising children is fun most of the time, but afterward, we know we have done what is right and builds up not only our own world but the world of the people around us. 

Spiritual weightlifting is like that. Restraint, that is holding back our power and abilities to achieve something greater, is like that. And Lent is kind of the kindergarten for restraint. It puts restraint in a box for a time and tells us, "Don't do this destructive thing. Do this other thing that builds up for eternity. Do this other thing that will still matter tomorrow and will not build a thing you keep for yourself but will build a thing you share with God."

So Lent is kind of silly if all you do is stop drinking coffee or stop eating your daily M&Ms, but it's not silly if we can take the larger view. After all, God isn't ever small. We have to aim high and climb if we're ever going to get closer to Him.

Image: Terri Gillespie

The Dream that Doesn't Die

 

I'm going to see Bob Dylan live in concert for the first time on March 30. In preparation for that, I've been listening to what I hope will be, before then, all of his music, knowing that I'd missed so much of it after the early 70s. I want to hear all his music in order before then and now that I'm pretty far into it, am finding him sunk in some places deep into what sounds like a real life exposure to Desolation Row.

Listening to the music and how it changed along the way, I'm trying to figure out what happened. He got lost somehow. Something vital drained away. He deflated away into a memory of the inspired genius that had made him someone we looked toward for a glimpse of what we might be - outraged at the venality and mediocrity of a world we knew could be better - a constant prodding toward beauty and the glory of humankind - a voice that said not 'get more' but 'be better', 'think', 'act'. A command to not only 'love' (if loving could ever be an only) but 'Be love'. 'Be real.' 

And then it all stopped. Or more like it, braked to a gradual, deflating stop. It took years for him but it happened, I'm thinking, to the rest of us, too.

That's why the 60s were special. That time has been called a brief, shining moment for some of us. There were real palpable dreams for the possibility of what we might be. And what we might be had faces - Jack. Bobby. Martin.  

In the end, they had to die, of course. Mediocrity is jealous. It does not harbor excellence or dreams of egalitarian glory.  Glory, because it reminds us of what we cannot hold in our hands or even easily imagine, has to die, too. Jesus should have helped us remember that but although his name is often evoked, what he taught never quite caught on in spite of the crowds still in churches every week. 

Glory necessitates reaching beyond flesh and blood - not only beyond our own grasp but beyond our comprehension, forced to be content with desiring most what we can only approach but never attain. 

Dylan wasn't the only one who lost it. We all did, but some of us never stopped looking for it again - the beauty that just seeped away. Everyone looked in different places and some got lost in drugs or in corporate striving. Me, as it turned out - I went to Italy. I remembered the beauty of the Renaissance and recognized it as what we'd grabbed by the tail once long ago. There, I could literally reach out and touch genius, the kind of genius that is supernatural or metaphysical. More than flesh and blood. More even than mind.

Once that kind of genius is actually touched, even for a little while, everything else looks small and insufficient, because it is. I am still disappointed in the everyday that does not aspire to lift human souls to what can only be termed a kind of heaven. And that's what I saw in Italy. In the Farnese Hercules, I saw the disillusionment of doing what we think will make things right and finding that it doesn't:

In Michaelangelo's David and the ceiling of the Sistine, I saw physical representations of the discovery of human glory:

In Donatello's Magdalen, I see how these glorious discoveries can ruin flesh, can throw what we are and what we could be into a conflagration that cannot be resolved:

And this is where we are left today. The beauty of what we are made to be still calls. It's harder to get near now because we have no one alive who knows how to lead there, but the yearning still lives, and not just in this old hippy's heart, but in so many people who have been born to ask questions and wonder why the world is the way it is. I still believe that the dream of glory never dies. 

"You can be in my dream if I can be in yours.: - Bob Dylan said that.

First Image: Stereo Times

Old Lady Racing: How to get out of a Speeding Ticket

 

Back in the 80s, I used to drive a race car. Of course, that was then. These days, I don't have nearly as heavy a foot as I used to, although ironically, my street cars are more powerful. That's just the way cars (not trucks or SUVs - those don't count in my world) are made these days. 350HP and doubly aspirated, but with a two-body trunk and a back seat that easily accepts a car seat. Go figure. 

Driving is a weird thing. For some, it's independence. For some, it's just a way to get somewhere. For others, like me, it's like holding onto a hurricane. When I press the ignition button in my cockpit, feeling again the push of pistons against the fire that moves them and hearing the low growl of heat and air moving through the system, I smile. Something will happen when I step on the accelerator. Yes.

Then there are those days, of course, when a little too much happens. That's another thing about my car. It has plenty of power, but wears it secretly, hiding behind efficient mufflers and noise dampeners. Sneaky. And just a little dangerous. 

Like when I pull up alongside 4 16-year-olds in a convertible 5L Mustang on a sunny summer day. Grandma in her sedan. Ha. I've had two of them. Sneaky sportscars. The first was an SHO. Yowser, it was fun. Pure muscle and guile:

Until a truck nosed its way into somewhere he didn't belong and power couldn't get me out of:

That was a sad day. So I got a hot rod Lincoln. Ahh....

So when the light turned green for me and the Mustang, I'm a quarter mile down the road before they've left the light. Oh my, that feels good.

Not so good, though, when there's a patrol car up ahead with a not-so-friendly county sheriff in it. It's happened more than once, and I don't like that part one bit. These days, however, I have a secret weapon. 

My granddaughter, Autumn. 

She's gotten me out of two tickets. She didn't mean to, of course, but she sure did it.

The first time, she was in her car seat in the back. I'd just pulled out on the highway on the first leg of what was to be our first road trip together and just before engaging the cruise control, he caught me. Way too fast, like 20 miles or so too fast. 

"Why is the policeman coming here, Grandma?"

"To keep us safe, honey."  Yeah, right. 

I rolled down the window, smiled, and handed him my license. Then he saw Autumn in the back seat. 

"I want to be a policeman!" she told him. That's all it took. He scolded me and let me go. Well done, girl.

It happened last Friday, too, and this time Autumn wasn't even in the car. Going only 12 miles over on a minor highway in a small Wisconsin town was enough to trigger the blue lights, though. 

"Where are you going?" 

"To my granddaughter's choir concert."

"Where is it?"

"Salem School." He knew the school was just down the street. It was a test. And again, he sent me on my way. 

Score. Not so bad for a grandma driving a sneaky sportscar. It's been more than 5 years since I've gotten a speeding ticket. I don't look too dangerous, after all. And Autumn surely doesn't. Good thing they can't read my mind. 

Please excuse me while I do a few donuts.